Originally Posted by
leigh123
Thanks guys. Our club will probably update our old laptop to a new one and latest Alycat but might hold off on the decoder till this plays out a bit longer.
Interesting you mention the Serial/USB converter Jeff. I remember earlier in the year trying to get our decoder to work on my new laptop. I bought a Serial/USB converter from Jaycar. I could never get it to work though. Couldn't recognise the Decoder at all. I put it down to being a Windows 7 thing and gave up. Now we do want to buy a new computer though. It might have been the Serial/USB converter not doing it's job. I did read there are problems with some brands.
Do you know of a particular brand/model that is known to work with the AMB2?
I had tried a few USB/Serial adaptors and naturally went for the cheaper ones first.
However the best one I found is a Belkin F5S409, it has always worked in the many situations I've used it for.
I do some work for a friend in the audiovisual industry and load programming into Crestron control gear and initial connection to Crestron processors is done by RS232 and Crestron recommend the Belkin F5S409.
http://www.belkin.com/au/p/P-F5U409
When you connect the USB/Serial adaptor to your computer the first time you usually need to go into the Device Manager and look to see which COM port number has been assigned to the adaptor and then adjust Alycat or whatever software you are using to match the COM port number.
After that it should remain on the same COM each time you use it, however if it decides not to work, check the Device Manager as it may have reassigned the COM port number.
You can change it in the Device Manager.
The other key part is to ensure the serial cable is the correct type.
There is straight wired and crossover wired.
I make my own serial cables and for the decoder you need one that is wired so that when the serial cable is plugged back into itself the same wires are on the same pins.
Bit rusty on this but I think this means it is a crossover cable.